The joys of seeing an anchor sink

St. Petersburg Times ^ | September 26, 2004 | ERIC DEGGANS, Times TV/Media Critic

[tertiary01]

Midnight bump

[ozzymandus]

Great. Marvin (the pompous commie) Kalb defending cap'n dan. That'll help a bunch.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

LOL

[NYCVirago]

This article acts as if Rather's main flaw is using goofy, folksy sayings. It's not his dopey metaphors that are the problem; it's the double standard he has when it comes to covering Democrats and Republicans.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

All these "fixers" need to look into a

[Bonaparte]

But until "Memogate," there really wasn't an incident that pulled together Rather's tightly wound, quirky personal style with a major journalism gaffe.

Deggans should change his name to Rip Van Winkle. He must have slept through Rather's public slandering of General Westmoreland, the 120 million lawsuit and the payout by CBS. That was back in the early 80s. He must have slept through all of Rather's deceptions over the years. Oops, I mean "gaffes."

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Yeah, gaffes.....

LOL

[Bonaparte]

I can't believe Kalb, who is not stupid, can defend Rather with a straight face. Danny boy actually insisted that the Russians liked living under communist dictatorship, enjoyed the brutality, the poverty, the injustice, and had no interest in freedom.

[stands2reason]

Are you telling me that this Kalb is NOT an "unbiased expert?"

I'm shocked, shocked to the core!

I bet Deggans thinks we can't see his thinly disguised hostility towards those conservative "haters" that dare to criticize Dan.

Let's ask Mr. Subtext.

Mr. Subtext: (translating Eric's column) "Okay, you meanies! I hope you're happy now! You tried to ruin a wonderful old man's life because you confuse folksy sayings with bias! Shows how dumb you are, thinking Dan's gonna lose his job BECAUSE HE ISN'T!!! So go ahead and dance, you stupidheads!!!"

[Cincinatus' Wife]

The perils of designer tribalism***...Part of what makes The Tears of the White Man such an important book is Bruckner’s sensitivity to the aerodynamics of liberal guilt. He understands what launches it, what keeps it aloft, and how we might lure it safely back to earth. He understands that the entire phenomenon of Third Worldism is fueled by the moral ecstasy of overbred guilt. Bruckner is an articulate anatomist of such guilt and its attendant deceptions and mystifications. “An overblown conscience,” he points out, “is an empty conscience.”

Compassion ceases if there is nothing but compassion, and revulsion turns to insensitivity. Our “soft pity,” as Stefan Zweig calls it, is stimulated, because guilt is a convenient substitute for action where action is impossible. Without the power to do anything, sensitivity becomes our main aim, the aim is not so much to do anything, as to be judged. Salvation lies in the verdict that declares us to be wrong.

The universalization—which is to say the utter trivialization—of compassion is one side of Third Worldism. Another side is the inversion of traditional moral and intellectual values. Europe once sought to bring enlightenment—literacy, civil society, modern technology—to benighted parts of the world. It did so in the name of progress and civilization. The ethic of Third Worldism dictates that yesterday’s enlightenment be rebaptized as today’s imperialistic oppression. For the committed Third Worldist, Bruckner points out,

salvation consists not only in a futile exchange of influences, but in the recognition of the superiority of foreign thought, in the study of their doctrines, and in conversion to their dogma. We must take on our former slaves as our models. . . . It is the duty and in the interest of the West to be made prisoner by its own barbarians.

Whatever the current object of adulation— the wisdom of the East, tribal Africa, Aboriginal Australia, pre-Columbian America —the message is the same: the absolute superiority of Otherness. The Third Worldist looks to the orient, to the tribal, to the primitive not for what they really are but for their evocative distance from the reality of modern European society and values.

It is all part of what Bruckner calls “the enchanting music of departure.” Its siren call is seductive but also supremely mendacious. Indeed, the messy reality of the primitive world—its squalor and poverty, its penchant for cannibalism, slavery, gratuitous cruelty, and superstition—are carefully edited out of the picture. In their place we find a species of Rousseauvian sentimentality. Rousseau is the patron saint of Third Worldism. “Ignoring the real human race entirely,” Rousseau wrote in a passage Bruckner quotes from the Confessions, “I imagined perfect beings, with heavenly virtue and beauty, so sure in their friendship, so tender and faithful, that I could never find anyone like them in the real world.” The beings with whom Rousseau populated his fantasy life are exported to exotic lands by the Third Worldist. As Rousseau discovered, the unreality of the scenario, far from being an impediment to moral smugness, was an invaluable asset. Reality, after all, has a way of impinging upon fantasy, clipping its wings, limiting its exuberance. So much the worse, then, for reality. As Bruckner notes, in this romance adepts “were not looking for a real world but the negation of their own. . . . An eternal vision is projected on these nations that has nothing to do with their real history.” ....***

[Lancey Howard]

Who is Marvin Kalb? Is he as big a moron as he sounds in this story?

[Bonaparte]

Thanks, CW. That sounds like an interesting book. To a lot of people the grass always looks greener in foreign hell holes.

[Anti-Bubba182]

"..With no-name backups such as John Roberts and Scott Pelley in the wings, few analysts expect CBS to dump Rather outright..."

The Independent panel investigates and proposes, but Sumner Redstone disposes and he doesn't seem happy.

Ultimately, the findings of the panel and Redstone's evaluation of bottom line considerations will determine if Dan and others are toast or not.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

... To a lot of people the grass always looks greener in foreign hell holes.

Bump!

[Cincinatus' Wife]

May 22, 2003 - An Interview with Mike Wallace: A Look Back and at What's Ahead for Broadcast News


Marvin Kalb, Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, was the first Director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy. He is now Executive Director of the center's office in Washington, D.C. At the Kennedy School, he hosted the PBS series "Candidates '88," and he has appeared regularly on PBS's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and other television and radio programs. Over a 30-year career as a Chief Diplomatic Correspondent for CBS News and NBC News, and as moderator of Meet the Press, Kalb received numerous awards for excellence in diplomatic reporting. A graduate of the City College of New York, he has an MA from Harvard and was zeroing in on his PhD in Russian history when he suddenly left Cambridge in 1956 for a Moscow assignment with the State Department. His The Nixon Memo was published in 1994. He also is the author of two best-selling novels and a new book entitled One Scandalous Story: Clinton, Lewinsky and Thirteen Days That Tarnished American Journalism.

http://www.brook.edu/gs/research/projects/press/020522.htm

[pt17]

Marvin Kalb Enlightenment:

Well, I think that Bernie (Bernard Goldberg) is dead wrong. [snip] In my own book, I talk about tarnishing the news. We share the idea that they're not doing a good job, but why? If the underlying precept here, is that there is political bias, and that's what you're saying. That is wrong, and I think you know that deep down

Source: PBS Newshour - 2002

When it comes to books, reasoning and reality, Kalb appears the loser.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

[Bahbah]

"...(But) I don't think Dan Rather put (ideologically) suspect stories on the air."

In a related comment, Kalb mentioned that he didn't think Stalin doctored photos.